India-South Asia Interface: Religion, Politics and the Wider World

233 Pages·2021·7.609 MB·English

by  Partha S. Ghosh

INDIA-SOUTH ASIA INTERFACE

India-South Asia Interface raises the fundamental question: How
does one make sense of South Asia? Conventional wisdom defines it
primarily in terms of regional and international politics. The failures
of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
are emblematic of that wisdom. Marking a departure from such
approaches, Partha Ghosh makes the case that more than merely a
political construct South Asia must be understood as a shared social
consciousness. Through chapters that explore topics such as threats
to democracy, religion and politics, the place of Kashmir, different
conceptions of regionalism, the roles of America and China, and the
issue of refugees and migrants, he demonstrates that there is no escape
from reinventing the region from a people’s perspective. Only this way
can South Asia retrieve its soul and replace its cynicism and despair
with expectation and hope.
Based primarily on Ghosh’s research articles and newspaper columns
written over the last five years, the volume can be viewed as an intimate
statement of his understanding of the region; an understanding that
has matured through decades-long interactions with the region’s
academics, politicians, and the so-called ‘man on the street’. In some
sense, the volume is also a semi-autobiographical treatise, which spells
out Ghosh’s systematic evolution as a confirmed South Asianist. The
region’s destiny ought to be wrested, he therefore argues, from the
hands of its political leaders and returned to the common men and
women of the region. This underlying theme populates every chapter
and page of the volume.
Partha S. Ghosh (b. 1947) is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute
of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Formerly he was Professor at JNU,
Visiting Professor at Heidelberg and Victoria University (Wellington)
and a Ford Scholar at the University of Illinois. Between 2008 and
2016 he was the editor of India Quarterly. His latest book is The Politics
of Personal Law in South Asia (Routledge, 2018).

India-South Asia Interface

Religion, Politics and the Wider World
PARTHA S. GHOSH
MANOHAR
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Partha S. Ghosh and Manohar Publishers
The right Partha S. Ghosh to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh,
Pakistan or Bhutan)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 9781032200682 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781003262084 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003262084
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro 11/13
by Kohli Print, Delhi 110 051
To the common people of

South Asia

Contents

Preface 9

1. In Search of a Region 11

2. Religion and Politics 34

3. Kashmir Imbroglio 74

4. Illegal Immigration and the North-East 89

5. Islamophobia 120

6. Chinese Elephant in the Room 130

7. SAARC: Hoping Against Hope 149

8. Negotiating an Uncertain World 167

9. South Asia in Perspective: Some Memories,

Some Reflections 192

Author’s Select Publications 221

Index 225

Preface

This is a collection of my short essays written over the last five
years. They were essentially devoted to contemporary Indian af­
fairs keeping the regional and global developments in mind. Most
of them appeared as my monthly column in the Dhaka Tribune
since December 2018 which, since August 2019, have also been
simultaneously published by Newsclick, a Delhi-based news-portal.
To supplement the overall picture, some other short publications
of mine have also been incorporated, for example, the first chapter,
which defines South Asia, is a reproduction of my ‘Special Article’
in Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai) in its 6 August 2016
issue under the title, ‘Region without Regionalism: Cooperation
in South Asia’.
For the convenience of my readers I have not put these essays in
chronological sequence of their publication but jacketed them in
eight thematic chapters. The ninth one is of a different kind. It is
largely autobiographical, telling the story of why and how I be­
came a champion of South Asian regionalism, though not in the
way the regional states want to approach it, which is the conven­
tional wisdom. To my mind there is an undercurrent of South
Asian consciousness running across the region but unfortunately
it has been hijacked by the modern state systems and, in the pro­
cess, completely messed up. In this chapter, which has been written
from my heart, I have pleaded for more and more popular interac­
tion across South Asia without which SAARC will always remain a
dream never to be fulfilled.
At the end of the book is appended a list of my own writings
specifically compiled keeping in view each country of the region or
some overarching themes that are relevant for a better understanding
of the region. In this connection one may think of the SAARC
experiment, the issue of family laws (personal laws) and the dis­
course over the uniform civil codes, or, the important role that the